How To Get Dogs To Settle While You Are Out

[wuffles]

Sorry, this is a bit long.

I know a lot of people say that their dogs sleep all day while they are out. Is there a way to 'teach' this behaviour if they do not do it naturally?

My two dogs behave very differently when they are alone versus when we are home with them (even doing nothing). We have filmed them on numerous occasions to see what they get up to while we're at work.

They are walked for an hour every morning, then they are left with a Kong each plus activity toys and scattered kibble when we leave for work. It takes them about half an hour to clear out all the food, then they play for about an hour - which can get a bit noisy! After that, the older boy tends to settle down for a nap, but our girl acts like a busybody (patrolling the fenceline, chewing the clam shell, rearranging the furniture, trying to entice the other dog to play) until she finally settles down just before lunch. A lot of the footage is of Satchmo fast asleep in the middle of the yard with Ava either wandering past or lying beside him but not sleeping - sniffing the air, chewing toys, etc. They seem to get more active again around 3pm. When we get home from work, they come inside, have a little play with us, then go to bed and pretty much stay there the whole night unless we take them for a walk, go to training, etc!

If we have a day off to do nothing, they sleep. They don't even have their morning play when we are around. They either sleep in the yard or sleep on their beds. Even if they don't get their walk, as long as we are home, they are happy just to hang around doing nothing. They don't bark at anything. Today OH is at home and he reported that they had their morning chasey barkey play, then realised he was home and have been lounging around snoozing ever since.

I don't think that more exercise or training for Ava is the answer as she doesn't tire and gets fit very quickly I do obedience and agility with her and she gets some form of training probably 5 afternoons out of 7. She is also a dog that will do a whole hour's obedience class and still want to do more She is very well behaved and calm both at home and out and about.

The main reason I would like to change this behaviour is that Ava gets excited by movement around our house (people walking past, neighbours, postie, etc) so when she lets out a woof or runs to the fence, it wakes up Old Man Satchmo who feels the need to add his opinion They don't bark too excessively (around once an hour for maybe 5-10 seconds) but I'd like them to be a bit more quiet and zen for both the neighbour's and their own sake.

Help? :D

[Agility Dogs]

Sounds a lot like my house!

How old is your girl?

The only thing that I would/could suggest is that you might be able to train of a morning instead of an afternoon. My three are the same as your girl - able to do a LOT of work and still want more, but it seems that on the days when we do training in the middle of our walk that they are more settled on the days when we 'just' go for a walk.

Other than that it is a very difficult puzzle to solve!

Good luck with it.

[corvus]

I could write an essay on this topic. I've spent the last year playing around with conditioning activity patterns in Erik. I've read stacks of kind of non-mainstream literature on it, experimented with several ideas, and basically discovered that there are lots of things that contribute to arousal and subsequent activity. I haven't figured them all out yet. A lot of it might be Ava's age.

Anyway, I don't know that there's much you can do if the unsettled behaviour is specifically while you're not there short of drastically changing their ability to interact with each other. Suffice to say I think there's a lot of habit to activity patterns. If you want to change them, view it as breaking a habit. They will keep behaving the way they are used to as long as the opportunity to do so is there, and no cues are present to tell them to do otherwise. But that's not to say you might be able to have success creating a new habit without direct input just by conditioning a response. Example, condition dogs that when you put their mats down they should lie on them and relax. If you can condition it strongly enough, which is not necessarily loads of work, you might be able to cue them to a more settled daily activity pattern by putting the mats down when you leave.

[wuffles]

Thanks guys, she is just under 18 months old so still quite young. She is a velcro dog and likes to constantly know what is going on. She loves staring out our front window just watching the birds/people. At obedience trials she is not happy in her crate and prefers to be out watching everything that's happening (we were watching UDX a few weeks back and she was fascinated by the dogs doing the seekback... tilted her head and watched their every move, albeit very calmly... think she thought they were looking for food on the ground!).

I do think that habit is a big part of it, corvus. They seem a bit more settled when we leave them if we have to go out at night or on weekends, when the routine is obviously different.

ETA: We left them inside the house once when we were out and let's just say we won't be doing that again

Edited May 9, 2011 by wuffles

[raineth]

wuffles, do you have see-through fences (like wire, or pailings with gaps etc)?

I find that dogs that can see through the fence, pay a lot more attention to what's going on outside the fence line and are more vocal about it.

[wuffles]

wuffles, do you have see-through fences (like wire, or pailings with gaps etc)?

I find that dogs that can see through the fence, pay a lot more attention to what's going on outside the fence line and are more vocal about it.

There is only one side with slight visibility into the neighbour's yard (small gaps between palings) but they tend to bark at sounds more than sight.

[Agility Dogs]

wuffles, do you have see-through fences (like wire, or pailings with gaps etc)?

I find that dogs that can see through the fence, pay a lot more attention to what's going on outside the fence line and are more vocal about it.

There is only one side with slight visibility into the neighbour's yard (small gaps between palings) but they tend to bark at sounds more than sight.

Could you crate inside while you aren't there?

[wuffles]

wuffles, do you have see-through fences (like wire, or pailings with gaps etc)?

I find that dogs that can see through the fence, pay a lot more attention to what's going on outside the fence line and are more vocal about it.

There is only one side with slight visibility into the neighbour's yard (small gaps between palings) but they tend to bark at sounds more than sight.

Could you crate inside while you aren't there?

We're gone for about 9 hours a day.

[corvus]

Maybe you could insidiously pair some really obvious stimulus with the beginning of 'settle down' when you are home with them and transfer it. Like some kind of special treat or activity toy they get when it's time to settle that you could give to them as you are leaving. Or several obvious stimuli. A chain of cues could be quite potent, maybe? Like I have a routine when I leave my boys. It goes, outside, cued to toilet, grab a couple of dried cow ears from the cupboard outside, call dogs back in, close and lock doors, then give them their ears and sneak out the front door. Erik starts getting excited when he sees me collecting my things together. Oh boy, I'm gonna get a cow ear! Particularly because I generally only do it when I'm leaving for several hours like if I'm going to uni. I tend to get more things together and put them in a different bag. Erik knows what that means. Kivi doesn't care so much. :p

Incidentally, Erik barks more if he can't see what's going on. He's very attentive to sound and seems to be anxious about not being able to see what's making the sounds. It might be different if we had a bigger yard, though.

[sas]

Thanks guys, she is just under 18 months old so still quite young. She is a velcro dog and likes to constantly know what is going on. She loves staring out our front window just watching the birds/people. At obedience trials she is not happy in her crate and prefers to be out watching everything that's happening (we were watching UDX a few weeks back and she was fascinated by the dogs doing the seekback... tilted her head and watched their every move, albeit very calmly... think she thought they were looking for food on the ground!).

I do think that habit is a big part of it, corvus. They seem a bit more settled when we leave them if we have to go out at night or on weekends, when the routine is obviously different.

ETA: We left them inside the house once when we were out and let's just say we won't be doing that again

Perhaps consider giving her a platform in the yard so she can view the world without the ability to escape or would she just bark at everything?

Could you provide enrichment activities that make her think longer and harder?

[wuffles]

Perhaps consider giving her a platform in the yard so she can view the world without the ability to escape or would she just bark at everything?

Could you provide enrichment activities that make her think longer and harder?

She can look out the gap at the side of the front gate if she wants to but I've never seen her try! She does enjoy looking out our front window though so I will have a think about it

Any suggestions for enrichment activities that would take longer are welcome The only thing I've found that takes her longer than about 30 minutes are marrow bones, but I don't feel comfortable giving those every day. I suspect that sometimes the enrichment activities make her more excited, and wonder whether she'd be better off without them...

[sas]

Perhaps consider giving her a platform in the yard so she can view the world without the ability to escape or would she just bark at everything?

Could you provide enrichment activities that make her think longer and harder?

She can look out the gap at the side of the front gate if she wants to but I've never seen her try! She does enjoy looking out our front window though so I will have a think about it

Any suggestions for enrichment activities that would take longer are welcome The only thing I've found that takes her longer than about 30 minutes are marrow bones, but I don't feel comfortable giving those every day. I suspect that sometimes the enrichment activities make her more excited, and wonder whether she'd be better off without them...

Enrichment is meant to cause activitiy i.e. to use up the dogs energy doing things that are natural and instinctive to dogs/breed. There really are a huge amount of Enrichment activities and you can make them as easy or as hard as you like.

For instance my pup gets fed her breakfast in an 'Enrichment Box'. I started out with it easy for her to get into and now it's bloody hard.

You can use scents as part of your enrichment such as scent trails of blood or Cinamon or Coconut, there's heaps to choose from that dogs love. Everynight I spend about 30 minutes creating the next days enrichment specific to my dog that I know she will love. Obviously you can't have enrichment to kick in at different times so I count on the ones I give her to last a long time or make her think to tire her.

The Platform idea is one that has successfuly worked with many a working dog in a suburban backyard, however if your dog is likely to bark at everything that goes by then that wouldn't work out well.

In addition if you have a working breed then your enrichment requirements would be different to my non-sporting breed.

Edited May 12, 2011 by MEH

[wuffles]

I am not just sticking her in the yard with nothing - she gets a lot of enrichment activities, but I still haven't found anything that takes a long time.

Edit: She is definitely capable of being calm and chilling all day - it's how to bring that out in her when we're at work that is my conundrum.

Edited May 12, 2011 by wuffles

[sas]

I am not just sticking her in the yard with nothing - she gets a lot of enrichment activities, but I still haven't found anything that takes a long time.

Edit: She is definitely capable of being calm and chilling all day - it's how to bring that out in her when we're at work that is my conundrum.

I didn't suggest you were? I'm not sure why you've gone on the defense. You asked for some ideas and I gave you some.

[wuffles]

I obviously took your post in the wrong way then, sorry.

What kind of things do you put in your Enrichment Box?